Close to Home: How Many Children?

Close to Home: How Many Children?

Number of Children, chart by author. 2016

Sometimes it is best to work out a project using paper. I know you can't see this clearly so, here is the scan of this at Flickr. 

You can easily see that my paternal ancestors that came here or lived in Scotland had many more children than my maternal New England ancestors, but only within these five generations. Except for one maternal ancestor (my Civil War 2nd great grandfather who was awarded the Medal of Honor who had seven sons), my family is pretty small.

 All are dead except for me and my descendants and my two first cousins on my paternal side and their families. My last aunt died last year. She was not only my paternal uncle's wife, she was a cousin to me on my maternal side and very interested in family history and knew a lot about where she lived. 

So many of the second generation of these people did not have families that I can follow down. My DNA reflects this in that most of the "hits" I get are very distant. On my paternal side, I have one second cousin that recently has done an Ancestry DNA test and it correctly matches him to me as our research had shown. 

 My mtDNA tells me almost nothing because the line back runs smack dab into my French Huguenot family who are not well recorded.  I do know some names and that's about it.